New areas of Hood Mountain Regional Park to reopen this weekend after post-fire overhaul

The wait is over for outdoors lovers who’ve been yearning to get farther into Hood Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve.

Nine miles of trail and other areas closed by the 2020 Glass fire will reopen Saturday for the first time in 20 months.

The Los Alamos Road entrance and parking lot on the park’s northwest side will be back in service, and the Hood Mountain Trail up to the mountain 2,730-foot summit overlooking Sonoma Valley will reopen, as well.

Also welcoming visitors for the first time since the September 2020 wildfire are the Merganser Pond backcountry campground and the nearby Panorama Ranch and Orchard Meadow trails, accessed from the lower, Pythian Road parking lot. The equestrian parking area off Pythian Road also will be reopened.

It’s the first time in a year — since a small-scale reopening last June — that parts of the badly burned property will be open for public access, following months of steady inquiries from hikers, cyclists and equestrians, park officials said.

“It’s going to be great to see the public’s reaction when they get back in there,” Sonoma County Regional Parks Director Bert Whitaker said.

Even with the new access, only about two-thirds of the park’s 19-mile trail system will be open to the public.

And those familiar with the park will find it vastly changed from what they knew.

About 80% of the roughly 2,000-acre park was burned in the 67,484-acre Glass fire, which barreled across the Mayacamas Mountains beginning Sept. 27, 2020 and ripped through the parts of the park on the first day, with extremely high intensity.

Though a portion on the southern end also was charred during the 2017 Nuns fire, part of the North Bay firestorm, the Glass fire inflicted more significant damage across a broader swatch of the park, scorching hillsides, leaving blackened forests across ridgelines and leaving the densely wooded park much more open and exposed.

The fire consumed a great deal of plant life, revealing the contours of the steep and rugged canyons, where native plants and trees are beginning to regrow, as well as the serpentine geology on which the Sargent cypress pygmy forest once stood.

That means visitors should not expect as much shade as they once enjoyed, Whitaker noted. But it also means they’ll have better views and perspective on the fire-adapted landscape, as nature works its magic.

“It really opens up a bigger picture of this area, the Mayacamas, and how wild it really is,” Whitaker said.

Park crews and trail stewards have been hard at work, too, felling and removing hundreds of burned, hazard trees and repairing road, signage, fencing and other damaged and destroyed infrastructure.

The Summit Trail, for instance, remains closed because a substantial number of wooden posts need to be replaced, Whitaker said. Also closed are sections of the Upper and Lower Johnson trails and the Azalea Creek picnic area and campground.

The Natkemper-Goodspeed Trail maintained by Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and connecting the two adjoining parks eopened last year.

Much of the destruction was in steep, remote, hard to access areas made more difficult to reach because of fire damage to two key access roads. The parks department had to invest in new equipment, as well, including a 45- ton excavator and a tracked wood chipper that could be moved around the park.

Opened park areas are deemed safe, but work, including hazard tree removal, continues.

Visitors are urged to abide by park rules, stay on trails and roads and respect the land’s recovery, particularly where native vegetation is being replanted, trails are being rebuilt, and campground, picnic, trail signage and other infrastructure are being replaced.

The northwest entrance and parking lot is at 3000 Los Alamos Road. Visitors also can park and enter the park at 1450 Pythian Road, off Highway 12.

Parking is $7 for the public and free for regional park members with a pass.

More information and an updated map is available at bit.ly/39TU21h.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.